Genetic Food Fight
The Wall Street Journal May 15, 2003
The Bush Administration's trade record is far from spotless, as we've often pointed out. But its decision this week to file suit at the WTO against the European Union's moratorium against genetically modified crops starts a very useful food fight.
The ban is almost certainly illegal under WTO rules, it has no basis in science and it is hurting some of the poorest and hungriest countries in the world. A number of African countries, most prominently Zambia, have been pressured by the EU ban into refusing food aid from the U.S., for fear that American GM food will "taint" their own crops and leave them shut out of European markets.
In support of the case, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick mustered some 3,000 scientists, including 20 Nobel Prize winners, all of whom maintain that the EU's biotech protectionism amounts to junk science. The complaint is joined or supported by more than a dozen other countries.
The EU knows that the ban is insupportable legally and scientifically. Three years ago, Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstroem called it "illegal and not justified," and Health Commissioner David Byrne has been saying the same for years. In response to fear-mongering in the late 1990s by countries like France and Germany, the commission launched a six-year study of the safety of GM foods. Its conclusion, published last year, was that they not only pose no threat but are in many cases safer and more environmentally friendly than traditional crops.
They're safer because the genetic modifications are tightly controlled to achieve a certain aim, such as pest resistance, rather than the result of random mixing of strains or crops in the hope that a valuable hybrid will emerge. They are more environmentally friendly because the modifications often allow for higher yields (meaning less land under cultivation) and reduced pesticide use due to pest resistance.
Yet when some countries banned the import of even EU-approved genetically modified crops five years ago, the European Commission stopped processing applications for approval of new GM strains. Now the EU says all it wants is an adequate labeling and traceability regime.
What this means in practice, however, is that all crops -- and not just GM products -- will have to undergo costly and unnecessary testing at each stage of production to check for the presence of GM foods. The European greens behind this boondoggle may hope it will drive up the price of GM-derived products, but the requirements are so stringent that they'd drive up the price of all food in Europe.
The labeling requirement is merely a scare tactic. If it's truly a question of consumer choice, then a voluntary "GM-free" labeling system would allow those who really care to pay extra for the comfort of avoiding "Frankenfood," without forcing all consumers to pay for their paranoia.
Unfortunately for Europe's environmentalists, price surveys in Europe indicate that products currently labeled "GM-free" enjoy zero price premium relative to unlabeled products. In other words, for all the huffing about how important the issue is to European consumers, no one seems willing to pay anything extra for protection from the dread GM.
What we have here is the spectacle of timid European politicians and bureaucrats flacking for a handful of misinformed and radical -- and no surprise, mostly French -- environmentalists. If there were ever such a thing as a just trade war, this is it.
online.wsj.com
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